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On a Tuesday night in February, the line to get into the Echoplex stretched all the way down Glendale Boulevard. Hundreds of mid-20s to early-30-somethings waited with huge grins on their faces, ready to hear the music that changed their young lives. Once inside, they crowd-surfed, moshed and hoisted beers with their best friends. They hadn't felt this good about rock 'n' roll in years. The band? There was no band. There were three young DJs spinning weepy emo-rock songs off a laptop. But that night still probably drew the most enthusiastic club crowd in L.A. "Strangers were holding each other and singing," said Morgan Freed, the 30-year-old co-founder of...

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On a Tuesday night in February, the line to get into the Echoplex stretched all the way down Glendale Boulevard. Hundreds of mid-20s to early-30-somethings waited with huge grins on their faces, ready to hear the music that changed their young lives. Once...

With fake-diamond studs lining his lips and ears, and a tattoo carved under his dreadlocks, Omar Sayut is hard to miss.
His version of Cuban hip-hop is what you might call hard to miss too.
"Down with Raul! Down with Raul!" he chants in a...

There was something peculiarly endearing about an audience of pop music geeks cheering the details of Saturday night’s sold-out benefit performance of the Beatles’ "White Album" in its entirety at Glendale’s Alex Theatre.
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Alice wants her wonderland.
Lewis Carroll's iconic creation is such a natural for music you might have expected a surfeit of Alice operas in the 150 years since the publication of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Yet none were notable enough...

Nearly four decades may separate Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” but many of its musical elements hew too close for comfort, a musicologist testified Thursday in a federal copyright infringement trial.
Judith...

Occasionally, for reasons of fate or coincidence, sounds from the past converge in the present at key moments.
Consider the Staple Singers, whose gospel recordings starting in the early 1960s carried them through the next four decades and included...

Many tone varietals run through pop music, some poisonously bitter and abrasive, others as sweet as honeysuckle. The sound the electronic artist Caribou (a.k.a. Dan Snaith) created at the Fonda on Thursday night hit the eardrums like velveteen berries:...

Whether Rolex, the official timepiece of Los Angeles Opera, knows it not, it is as much a beneficiary of the work of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais as the opera company itself. The 18th century French playwright wrote the trilogy of plays around...

Since the music industry began in the early 20th century, musicians and songwriters have complained about paltry royalty payments for their creations.
It's not only the amount of money they complain about. It's waiting for their money, sometimes for...

When California State University, Fullerton, composer Pamela Madsen began a festival devoted to contemporary female composers 14 years ago, she wasn’t exactly a voice in the wilderness.
There were successful female composers. Southern California had a...

A chocolate-chip cookie resting on a plastic foam plate before him, Bob Seger sat in his dressing room at a quarter to 8 on Wednesday night dressed in jeans, sneakers and a faded black Indian Motorcycles T-shirt.
An hour later, the veteran rocker bounded...

Long before Brandy Clark scored 2015 Grammy nominations for best new artist and country album, and before critics started lauding her 2013 debut album “12 Stories” as one of the freshest arrivals in recent years, the singer and songwriter knew she was...

Much will be written in the coming days about Leonard Nimoy the actor and science fiction icon and his place in television history. But as we celebrate this, let us not forget one of Nimoy’s most important contributions: “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins,” his...

Gabriel Kahane hearts L.A.
Although the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter has been heralded as a star of New York's new-music scene, his latest album is a love letter to the City of Angels. Now, "The Ambassador" — 13 songs, each based on a...

Gaming and the symphony come together when Nintendo’s “The Legend of Zelda” concert series makes a stop in Las Vegas in June.
The “Master Quest” show celebrates the 28-year-old video game franchise wit

"I thought I'd lost it all," Dawn Richard sings on the opening of her wildly imaginative sophomore album, "Blackheart."
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Members of U2 probably aren’t laughing, but they appear to be having the last smile in the brouhaha over last year’s unannounced installation of their latest album, “Songs of Innocence,” onto several hundred million iPhones and other Apple iOS devices.
A...

Who should any musician who wants to be at his or her best call to help prepare for an impending tour? Why, Oscar winner J.K. Simmons, of course.
Weird Al Yankovic has posted a video in which he appears to interact with Simmons in one of the pivotal...

Christina Aguilera retook her seat in the big, red spinning chair on “The Voice” in its Season 8 premiere on Monday night. Sliding apparently quite happily back in her middle-line spot, flanked by original bromantic stalwarts Blake Shelton and Adam...